Madam Speaker, we just heard the Minister of Labour questioning whether the Bloc was the official opposition. It is the official opposition and the Reform Party is the national opposition.
The Bloc mentioned the noble conception of its role. I disagree with that. I do not find anything about what it is doing with regard to the legislation noble. I find the actions of the Bloc Quebecois selfish and the most unconscionable I have seen in Parliament. It has held up this legislation. It refused to waive the 48 hour notice necessary to get this in and debated quickly. It has used every procedural tactic at its disposal to further delay the passage of this bill.
We have to question what it is trying to accomplish. We know the legislation is going to pass. The Bloc knows the legislation is going to pass. It knows the CP, CN and VIA workers are going to be legislated back to work. The Bloc is costing them extra pay, costing the company extra revenue and costing companies all across Canada a great deal of income.
Why is it doing this? Why is it selfish? The reason is the port of Montreal. That is the sole reason we are all here today on the weekend debating these delaying tactics offered up by the Bloc.
When the port of Montreal went down it happened that the Standing Committee on Transport was in Halifax. Halifax was booming. Everyone was walking around with a great smile on their face because they had a tremendous amount of business coming their way. It was pointed out to the member of the Bloc who sat on that committee: "You had better go back and tell those people in the port they are really making a big mistake because some of the traffic diverting to Halifax is not going to go back when the strike is over. That is the way things operate".
The Bloc took that to heart because we did not see too much of it for a while after that. There were lots of telephone calls back and forth. Then this great saving situation happened, the rail strike. All of a sudden Halifax cannot get a lot of the goods to load on the ships being diverted there. This played right into its hands.
I wonder why there is so much emphasis on the port of Montreal. This is not an action on behalf of Quebec, which the Bloc is really supposed to represent because it is certainly not representing the rest of Canada. This is costing manufacturers, importers, people all across the country huge sums of money. The total loss is expected to run in the range of $3 billion to $5 billion and that does not end when the strike is over.
This is not costing B.C. companies or Saskatchewan companies. It is companies all across Canada, including companies in Quebec. Bloc members are hurting the economy of their own province. They are hurting it at a time when they know full well the legislation is going to be passed in any case. This is nothing more than a simple tactic.
As was mentioned by the Minister of Labour during her speech this morning, there was not a peep out of Bloc members when the same legislation was brought in on dock workers in Vancouver. Why? Because they did not care. It was the very same principle but it did not matter to them then. It was not the port of Montreal.
The Bloc is trying to take every tactic to ensure that the rail stays out until after the port of Montreal goes back to work. That is all they are interested in.
The Liberals are not totally innocent in this either. We brought this up long before the strike ever came in. We brought it up last year when legislation was brought in for the dock workers in Vancouver. Our economy is far too fragile and far too interwoven to allow something this massive to go on. We have to find alternatives and no action has been taken by the government to do so.
During the first week of the strike I attempted to contact the Minister of Labour numerous times. I was promised a return call. My intention was to find ways to work with the government to bring the matter back so that we could get it settled. We were
quite prepared to co-operate. I know the minister was extremely busy at that time, as well being relatively new in the portfolio. I understood that.
Appointments were made for the return of my phone call and they were never kept. The Liberals had the opportunity to use broader legislation at the time they legislated back the Vancouver dock workers. It only took them two days to do that. Why has it taken them so long in the case of the rail strike? The reason probably is that they had to wait to make sure that CN was fully involved in the strike so that they could bring CN into the scope of the legislation as well.
The government's real target is CN. It wants to bring in legislation that includes binding arbitration for CN. That is the only part of all the tactics of the Bloc I have some agreement with.
One problem in the legislation is the arbitration clause. It says with regard to CN that there will be one member from the union; one member from the company, which is the government; and one member appointed by the government. We have a vague idea about how the arbitration will come out.
The only alternative in this case is the Liberal solution used in the case of the dock workers' strike last year. Why did they use it last year and not now? I am talking of final offer selection arbitration which gives the company and the union the chance to get much closer together. It puts a lot more pressure on them to be as close as possible and to take the most reasonable position possible. It will allow them to settle outstanding issues and try to reach a total agreement. In the end it will be one side or the other. Whoever is the more unreasonable of the two will be the loser.
That is a fairer operation than the type of arbitration that has been brought forward. We have to go with the legislation because we have to get the country back to work. That is the bottom line. That is the most important part of the whole legislation.
I ask the Bloc to start acting like a national opposition party, be responsible, put the country back to work and put the economy back on its feet.